Portable handheld devices such as smartphones and tablet computing devices are widely distributed around the globe. In some markets, nearly every potential consumer carries their own device and uses it to send and transmit information. Devices are configured to use phone networks, like 3G and 4G networks, as well as data networks such as Internet connections accessed through WiFi. Accordingly, these devices can offer their users the ability to send and receive data almost constantly while they are turned on.
This widespread connectivity is used for communication such as email or SMS text messages, advertising such as displaying banner ads in web browsers, and targeted marketing such as real-world posters which encourage a person to send a text message to a particular number to receive more information. However, when a number of devices are meant to receive a single communication, they will typically get it at differing times. This can be, for instance, because the individual devices are serviced by different providers or different types of connections, causing the devices to receive text messages or emails—even if sent simultaneously—at different times.
For example, one person may have a smartphone connected over a 3G cell network, while another person may have the same model of smartphone but may be connected through a WiFi hotspot with a greatly different data connection speed. Or, a person may have an iPhone or a different model of phone serviced by a different provider. Even if each device and connection is outwardly similar, behind-the-scenes network latency can prevent synchronous function. Ironically, the more alike two devices are in terms of model, location, or provider, the more likely it is that they are being serviced by the same hardware, such as the same sector of the same cell tower, with the result that the system must send and receive data to them in turn, rather than simultaneously.
Lacking the ability to operate in synchronicity, devices lack the ability to be beneficially used in communication or marketing efforts that require synchronization of function among devices. For example, a producer of a TV quiz show may want to provide viewers with a quiz show app that presents each viewer with a question simultaneously with its being asked in the show. If the producer transmitted the question as an email or an SMS text message, one viewer may receive it and answer it before another viewer receives it at all. Attempting to link a display time to a device system time does not help, because device system times can be arbitrarily or purposefully set incorrectly.